Thursday, July 01, 2010

The Tampa Bay Rays baseball team has hit a rough patch. Although they held on to first place in the toughest division in baseball throughout the first few months of the season, they've been no-hit twice and lost their grip on the division. This past week their centerfielder, B.J. Upton lollygagged his way to the ball. For a team struggling to score runs, this was not the effort you want to see. Upton has been benched before for not hustling and this seemed to be another case of him just giving up on a play. When he got back to the dugout, 24-year-old Evan Longoria approached him about his behavior and the two went face-to-face and had to be separated by teammates. I wrote on a sports blog I post on regularly about this incident and about how it brings back memories to one sports writer of a young Derek Jeter, who had, at 24, called out one of his veteran teammates for showing up another teammate. This is seen as a great leadership skill in an organization--self-policing.

I bring this up because while this type of approach may work in baseball, it most likely has no place in an organization. If a co-worker is not pulling his weight or is trying to show up another co-worker, it should not be left to self-policing. Although a good measure of "that is not right" should come from everyone involved and whistleblowing is encouraged at times, the problem itself should be handled by upper-management and Human Resources. Employees can become embarrassed on confrontational when they are publicly called out. Instead, a manager should be doing the discipline--and doing it in a private environment. Publicly calling out a co-worker for a mistake or leaving an office to be self-policed may work in baseball but it is not a good way to handle an office.